Restructuring the Black Hills Consortium Strategy

Today, we're looking at the executive documents for the Black Hills Consortium. It's a plan to revitalize Custer, South Dakota, by launching 11 interconnected entities all within 60 days. It's a massive vision. And right off the bat, the ambition to launch all 11 of those entities at once it actually undermines the project's credibility. Right. It just screams operational delusion. I mean, you're asking investors to believe one team can handle a cannabis sass, a real estate firm, and a K-12 foundation. All at the same time. It strains believability, and you know, it starts to look more like a lack of focus than actual competence. So what's the suggestion? We think you need to restructure the executive summary. Prioritize what you call the cash engine and the narrative engine. And position the other nine entities as like phased expansions, not immediate deliverables. Exactly. For example, the materials should really highlight grow-wise's specific revenue metrics. And the session media's audience growth make those the two pillars that support everything else. Mm-hmm. That's so much stronger than pretending the cult convention or the op-cafe are equal priorities right out of the gate. Okay, let's move on. The replication model. It seems to contradict its own premise by relying so heavily on the founder's unique biography. That is a huge weakness. It's the classic savior trap, right? Yeah. The documents claim this is a template for the respelt or apolachia. But the success really hinges on Luke Alvarez's specific assets. His background at Canvas, his mother's house in DC for lobbying. I mean, a typical small town council just doesn't have those things. They're just not replicable. So you have to decouple the system from the savior in the documentation. You've got to prove this whole thing works without a specific charismatic leader. Right. So in the replication playbook, instead of relying on these pre-existing political connections. You need a concrete generic strategy. Here's how a town without a Luke can build similar leverage maybe using the 501c6 structure. Makes sense. Okay, finally, let's look at the financials. That zero waste flywheel assumes a level of perfect efficiency that, well, it ignores market volatility. It's just too precarious. The weakness is the total interdependence of all the revenue streams. The assumption that tourist merch sales are going to reliably fund employee benefits. It's a house of cards. A small dip in tourism and suddenly your employee retention could be at risk across the board. So the fix is to introduce some stress-tested financial scenarios. Yes, exactly. In the revenue model, show that the ecosystem can survive even if that virtuous cycle jams up a bit. You need a base case budget. Show us a scenario where the cafe and the convention actually operate at a loss for a while. But the SaaS revenue from GrowWise is robust enough to cover all the campus overhead and salaries without any help from the flywheel. That would build so much more confidence. So to recap, our feedback is really focused on three main areas. First, narrowing the operational scope down to those key cash engines. Second, de-personalizing that replication playbook to make it truly transferable. And third, stress testing the financial flywheel to prove its resilience. If you can implement those changes, we think the strategy will be dramatically stronger. Please revise it and submit it for another look we'd love to see where it goes.